ELIZABETH FOX-GENOVESE
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weaves the texture in which judgment would have been: the sensibility
of morality, the yearning for meaning remain where once law held
sway. In
The Ice Age,
she reverts frequently to the possibility that
accident may mask choice-self-destructive choice. But she leaves the
issue open: a possibility among others. And against accident she
postulates salvation, as in Jane's first orgasm, powerfully and mov–
ingly described in a scant two pages worthy of any literature of
salvation, and succeeded by her gradual healing and learning to live as
a woman. Or Anthony's discovery of God while in prison.
Thus love, true sexual love, or maternal love, fills the place of
salvation. Drabble, in her endorsement of love as personal salvation,
avoids a crude hedonism. The ambiguity of
The Waterfall's
ending
amply confirms this residual reticence, as does Drabble's consistent
emphasis on love as meaning and connection-not mere gratification.
But the exclusive, accidental, personal, and even selfish quality of
individual fulfillment underscores the limitation of Drabble's vision.
Limitation not because happiness is wrong, as in some outmoded
puritan discourse, but because, by accepting the social context in
which it can only be so fleetingly personal, Drabble consistently
portrays it as occurring at others' expense: much as freedom from
rather than for, her heroines' happiness comes against rather than
with. To be sure, traditionally, salvation has had highly personal
connotations-the relationship of the individual soul to God. And the
bourgeois novel, that great tradition Drabble reveres, similarly focussed
upon the individual destiny. But traditional modes of salvation, like so
many bourgeois novels, assumed that the destiny of the individual had
a higher purpose with respect
to
the community at large. The marriage
of a Jane Austen heroine contributes to a vision of proper social order,
independent of whether or not one shares the politics or ideology upon
which the vision rests. In Drabble's work, order-be it human or
divine-proves elusive and problematical. Yet, paradoxically, Drabble
heroines remain very much in and of society-ready to enjoy its
privileges and advantages, provided they do not come at too high a
personal price. Their alienation, can such a term be applied, consists in
repudiating bourgeois-puritan constraints upon individual fulfillment
while continuing
to
accept the social substance of the world, the
corruptions and injustices of which are registered as meaningless
fetters on personal happiness. Anthony's salvation in
The Ice Age
conforms to this pattern in its total personalism-he escapes from the
mesmerizing entrapment of the market only through a vision he doubts
ever being able to share. This conflation of the specific interconnec-
